


Never Enough Cuddles

by Kiarawolf



Series: bff/tinfcomic Fanfiction Bomb [1]
Category: Best Friends Forever (Webcomic)
Genre: M/M, bffcomic, tencent - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-31
Updated: 2015-05-31
Packaged: 2018-04-02 04:11:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4045444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kiarawolf/pseuds/Kiarawolf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sharing a college room only brings Vincent and Teddy closer.<br/>Excerpt: Vincent stares at the back of Teddy’s head, resting there on the thin pillow. The top of Teddy’s hair and shoulder is illuminated softly by the window’s light; everything else is dark and still. ‘Goodnight, Teddy,’ he smiles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Never Enough Cuddles

**Author's Note:**

> Characters belong to Mickey Quinn  
> No profit is being made

‘Are you sure it’s alright, dude? The bed’s pretty small,’ Vincent says as he slides his shirt over his head.

‘Vincent, it’s my fault that yours is… currently uninhabitable. It’s the least I can do.’

  Vincent looks back at his bed; stripped of the sheets that are now sitting in their laundry basket, the strawberry-pink stain on the mattress is rather obvious. ‘Honestly, it’s my fault; I should have known better than to start a tickle war straight after we got Starbucks,’ he laughs.

  Teddy grins back at him, and they both clamber onto Teddy’s bed, settling in under the covers. Teddy lays his head on his arm, elbow pointing at Vincent. Waiting.

  Vincent tries to think of a song that he hasn’t sung before. Now that it’s become part of their nightly routine, he’s quickly burned through just about everything he knows off by heart… perhaps a made-up song, then.

‘ _Little fox, little fox, my oh my how long your whiskers are_ ,’ he starts, and smiles and Teddy’s eyes flutter shut. ‘ _Little fox, little fox, let me ask, how quick are your paws? You’re a feaster you’re a sneaker you’re a black-and-red mask; little fox, little fox, you’re a song without pause_.’

  Some time later, long after Vincent’s last note has trailed away, Teddy sighs. ‘I can’t sleep,’ he complains.

‘Oh, uh… am I taking up too much room? I’m sorry, I can like, move to the floor if you – ’

‘Vincent, don’t be silly. Besides, it’s actually nice, having someone else here. You’re warm.’

  Vincent tries incredibly hard not too read too much into that. Several responses flirt through his head – it’d be warmer in my arms – I know what we could do to warm up – come here and I’ll show you real heat – and he curses Louis for leaving him with such a dirty mind. ‘I like it too,’ he finally says, ‘less lonely, you know?’

‘Maybe you shouldn’t put your sheets in the wash tomorrow,’ Teddy jokes.

  Vincent is glad that the dark is mostly concealing his face. He hopes Teddy can’t see the blush creeping up his cheeks. ‘You really think so?’ He whispers.

  Apart from their steady breathing, the night is quiet. ‘Yeah. Then we could have sleep-overs every night,’ Teddy ventures, his head tilting up to look at Vincent with the star-light from their window reflecting in his large, dark eyes.

  Vincent can’t hold back his smile. ‘We’d better agree not to tickle, though.’

  Teddy laughs. ‘Yeah, that’s probably for the best.’ He rolls over, pushing his back up against Vincent’s side in an effort not to fall off the small bed. ‘Goodnight, silly,’ he says with affection.

  Vincent stares at the back of Teddy’s head, resting there on the thin pillow. The top of Teddy’s hair and shoulder is illuminated softly by the window’s light; everything else is dark and still. ‘Goodnight, Teddy,’ he smiles.

__

  Vincent stifles another yawn. Between early-morning football training and a full day of classes, he wants nothing more than to throw his head down on his pillows and call it a night.

  Except that there _is_ one thing that he wants more… to throw his head down on _Teddy’s_ pillows.

  _I won’t bring it up unless he does_ , Vincent swore to himself this morning, as he’d slipped out of bed in dawn’s soft light and watched Teddy’s sleep-heavy, flickering smile. Teddy had murmured goodbye and then rolled over, curling up into the warm depression that Vincent’s body had left in the mattress.

  Now, with the sun long since set and the day behind them, Teddy is bent over their desk, head lost in the thickest textbook Vincent’s ever seen. Just looking at it makes him glad that he’s not majoring in law.

  As he stifles another yawn, Vincent begrudgingly decides that he can’t hold out any longer. ‘Um,’ he announces, ‘I think I’m off to bed. Can’t keep my eyes open.’

  Teddy looks up from his studies, eyes blinking. ‘Oh. Yes. Bed,’ he nods. ‘Good idea.’

  Vincent just nods, not able to hold Teddy’s eyes.

  Teddy turns his head slightly to the side, looking back at Vincent with a cautious expression. ‘Would you like to – I mean I know I cleaned your sheets but honestly the milk would have smelt out the room otherwise, we could still…’

  Vincent reminds himself to breathe. ‘Uh, yeah – that would be cool, I guess.’

  Teddy beams. ‘Okay, I’ll be over soon. I just have to finish reading this case study for tomorrow. You know what my lecture’s like…’

  Thanks to Teddy’s stories, Vincent does. ‘Yeah dude, take your time. I’m probably just going to – uh, pass out, anyway.’

‘Just don’t slobber on my pillows,’ Teddy teases, turning back to his book.

  Vincent grins. ‘No promises.’ He stands, stretches, and disappears into the bathroom for a moment to clean his teeth. Moving back into the room proper, he collapses onto Teddy’s bed. Within moments, he’s snoring.

__

‘Vincent, Vincent,’ a voice is whispering in the dark some hours later. A hand is pushing on his arm, trying to shove him further across the bed. Half-asleep, Vincent allows himself to roll onto his side.

‘Teddy?’ he mumbles.

‘Shove over, you big bed-hog.’ Adding weight to his words, Teddy pushes his back up against Vincent’s front.

  _I’m dreaming,_ Vincent thinks, but he shifts himself over, giving Teddy space.

__

  In the nights that follow, the push-shove of co-habitation becomes part of their nightly routine; before Vincent starts singing, Teddy will call him a bed-hog and physically shove him across the mattress, and Vincent will grin and surrender as little territory as possible, leaving stubborn shoulders pressing and elbows poking stomachs.

  After the third night, Vincent stops apologising every time their feet touch; instead, he tickles Teddy with his toes, and Teddy pokes him with his fingers until it’s an all-out tickling war, each aiming for the sensitive arm-pits and the venerable sides, shrieking and laughing and practically wrestling.

‘I guess we broke our agreement,’ Teddy says after the first such fight, laying spread out with his hand over his forehead and his lungs pumping in-out, in-out.

‘It was an over-optimistic agreement, anyway,’ Vincent laughs.

__

  Their college room is nicer than Vincent’s old place, but no-where near as luxurious as Teddy’s. The mattresses are thin, the floor space is practically non-existent, and the window has never had curtains (despite their hastily-lodged complaint, the repair-person has never shown up to put them in). The bathroom tap drips sometimes (at least they have a bathroom to themselves; that’s one thing Teddy’s parent’s money was able to do) and the central light flickers until you throw a sock at it. Shoes work even better. The entire dorms are heated centrally, and sometimes that heating stops working in the middle of the night.

‘Vincent,’ a small voice is calling him awake, gently shaking his shoulder.

  Vincent forces his eyes open. ‘Mmm?’

‘It’s… I think the heating’s cut out…’

  Vincent, sleepy-slow, gazes at Teddy a moment too long, watching his bottom lip tremble and his shoulders shiver and his hands clutching the blanket up to his chin. Teddy feels the cold a lot easier than Vincent does.

‘Come here,’ Vincent murmurs, lifting his arm, and Teddy scoots into the space there, curling himself up into Vincent’s chest. Vincent lowers his arm over Teddy, resting the length along his back and pulling him closer.

  Slowly, Teddy’s shivers subside. ‘Thank you,’ he whispers, and Vincent rubs his thumb up and down on Teddy’s shoulder in way of reply.

__

  Vincent gets along relatively well with the other guys on his football team, but he rarely goes to group parties. He did enough of that in high school. He finds himself hanging out with Teddy’s friends instead, a diverse bunch of quirky law majors who’ve formed a study group. They goof off more than they study though, and Vincent enjoys making paper planes in the library and giggling over nothing after one too many energy drinks.

  The group takes Vincent and Teddy as a unit; ‘are you guys coming?’ ‘do you two want to…’ ‘Yay, TeddyandVincent are coming!’ Vincent thinks they’ve probably noticed that his sheets haven’t been changed since second week. It’s never mentioned, but everyone seems to assume they’re a couple.

  And they are, in all the ways that other people would notice. They order each other’s food, they sit together on the couch, they co-ordinate their social calendars. Even when the heating works, Vincent often wakes to find Teddy pressed up against him; a small hand bunched against his back and a large nose tucked in between his shoulder blades.

__

  During the winter break they stay at Teddy’s summer house, snug before the fire, playing board games and baking cookies as storms lash at the coast and against their windows. Vincent’s not sure how to feel about being back in this house. It’s like that first summer all over again, only now they’re even closer than before… and sharing a bed. And there’s still no discussion of that night in the pool when Vincent leant in too close and he honestly doesn’t know how Teddy would react if he tried it again.

  So he doesn’t.

  Second quarter, Teddy’s study group has swelled its ranks. ‘I’m Shelly,’ one girl introduces herself. ‘And this is my partner, Sam.’

‘You guys make a cute couple,’ Teddy smiles, shaking Sam’s hand. ‘Although it must be hard to kiss, what with your height difference.’

  It’s a joke, but Sam laughs for the wrong reason. ‘Oh, no, not at all. We’re not exactly… like that. We’re in a queer platonic.’

  Teddy’s handshake freezes. ‘What’s that,’ he asks, voice small.

‘It’s when your relationship is… above and beyond friends but still platonic. We’re not exactly romantically involved, just extra committed to each other. I’ve got some cool resources I could give you, if you’re interested?’

  Vincent meets Teddy’s eyes unsteadily. It’s not long before he looks away. For some reason, he’s blushing.

  The label hangs between them that night, stilting their usually flowing conversation, bringing the “sorry”s back every time their feet brush or their elbows bump. Vincent has a million questions sitting in his mouth, and though he manages to swallow them down, the lump in his throat doesn’t go away.

  Just before Vincent’s about to drop off, Teddy shifts onto his back, wide eyes staring at the ceiling. ‘Vincent…’ he asks, quietly.

  For a moment, Vincent wonders if he should pretend to be asleep. He’s happy here, in their bed-sharing undefined intimacy, and he’s so afraid that it’s all going to come tumbling down. That Teddy’s going to send him back across the room, where it’s cold and there’s too much space, and they’ll go back to the awkward too-polite friendship that they’ve only just grown out of. ‘Yeah,’ he whispers, voice tight.

‘…Does it bother you?’

  Vincent doesn’t need to ask what exactly Teddy’s referring to. It could be a hundred things. It could be anything. It doesn’t matter. Because no matter what “it” is, Vincent knows his answer will be the same; ‘of course not, dude.’

  Teddy rolls part-way over, balling himself up against Vincent’s chest and tucking his head up against Vincent’s heart. His shoulders shake slightly, and Vincent brings his arm over Teddy’s back, cradling him. ‘Of course not,’ he whispers again, and bites his lip as Teddy’s fingers spread out against his chest, warm and solid and stabilising. And then Teddy moves his head slightly, and Vincent feels a chaste kiss against his heart, wet with tears, and his eyes squeeze tight in an effort to hold back his own.

  He strokes Teddy’s back, slowly up and down, and plants a kiss in his hair and mummers ‘I love you’ so quietly that he doubts Teddy will hear it.

‘Should we… talk about it…?’ Teddy ventures, voice small.

  Vincent squeezes. ‘Only if, uh – if you want to, dude.’

  Teddy doesn’t reply, and, slowly, quietly, they drift away to sleep.

__

  Their third quarter is harder than the first two. Vincent’s football keeps him up late, trying to squeeze his course work into an increasingly packed schedule. Teddy’s studies are not much better; he spends hours at a time staring at tiny print in increasingly large text-books. A few weeks in, he has to increase the prescription on his glasses.

  The heating in their dorms seems to have been fixed, but Teddy and Vincent sleep with legs tangled and bodies spooning anyway. Sometimes, Vincent will lay a kiss upon Teddy’s forehead as they say goodnight. Sometimes, Teddy will introduce Vincent as his “partner in crime” at social gatherings.

  Their tickle fights never fail to leave them breathless, laughing and squealing and grinning at each other like loons. When that happens, Vincent will reach across and bop Teddy’s nose. ‘I love you,’ he’ll say, and Teddy will smile.

‘I know,’ is always his reply.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know what you thought! Post a comment below or send me an ask at kiarawolf.tumblr.com


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